The Law of War

I subsequently recorded a lecture on the halachic justifiability of Shimon and Levi’s massacre of Shechem – a (temporally) shorter, and perhaps tighter and more rigorous, treatment of some of the same territory. It, too (along with accompanying notes), is available at the Internet Archive.

In the course of preparing for the latter lecture, I encountered a curious error in an otherwise impressively erudite and comprehensive article by Yechiel Goldhaber. The context is Rambam’s justification for the massacre of Shechem:

This is incorrect; I am not sure whom Goldhaber has in mind by “those who bring this explanation” and what he means by “the language of the Ramban”, but Hizkuni’s language is quite similar to Rambam’s:

Ralbag’s first explanation is quite interesting and provocative: Shimon and Levi massacred Hamor and the population of (the city of) Shechem to prevent them from avenging the execution of (the person) Shechem. This seems to be the assertion of a novel and profoundly important extension of the law of the pursuer (רודף): even someone who is not currently engaged in any sort of hostile activity, and has made no declaration of intent to do so in the future, may be killed based upon the mere expectation of his future conduct.

Other Rishonim justify the massacre of Shechem by more traditional applications of the law of רודף:

In a legendary, possibly apocryphal account of the tragic fate of the Convoy of 35 (מחלקת הל”ה), the brave but humane Israeli fighters seal their own doom by declining to execute one or more Arabs they encounter, who subsequently sound the alarm and trigger the fatal ambush. I have long wondered whether the halachah would have actually allowed the execution of the Arab(s), insofar as their future hostile conduct was foreseeable. Ralbag’s radical extension of the law of רודף would indeed seem to justify such a preemptive execution.